Angry Daniel

Today I lost my temper.

I had a P.E. class with the Grade Twos and they pushed me until I cracked and started to yell at them... well, yell at them more than usual.  Grade Two has always been very problematic, Amanda gets frustrated to tears with them because they have no discipline, they are very slow and they generally think that they are the greatest gift to all humanity.  There are a few especially bad kids, and a few especially good kids, but the general theme of the class is that they are chaotic.

In my P.E. classes, I have two simple rules.  You have 5 minutes to get changed and be in the hall, anyone who isn't in the hall has to go back to the change rooms and misses out on sport.  I had to instigate this because they were taking up to 20 minutes out of a 45 minute lesson to get changed which (when you consider that they took another 20 minutes to get back into their school clothes) meant that there was only 5 minutes for sport.  My second rule is that I will give you 3 warnings for bad behaviour whereupon you will go back to the change rooms and miss out on the rest of the lesson.  They are easy to understand rules that give the kids a definitive guideline as to what will happen if they are ratbags.

Anyway, in today's lesson, one of the kids got his three warnings before the five minute deadline was even up.  So he had to get changed.  Two girls didn't make the 5 minutes, so they had to get changed.  Another kid started kicking the football around while other people were finishing the warm up, he refused to participate and he pushed another child, so he had to get changed.  Four of the girls decided that they were sick.  So they had to get changed.  No one was listening.  No one was following the rules.  So I cancelled P.E. mid-lesson and marched them all back to their classroom.  I then yelled at them more harshly than I have ever before and gave them so much homework that even the good kid's eyes bulged.  I always believe that it is unfair to punish indiscriminately but in that case, no one is good.  I'll go in there tomorrow and if anyone hasn't finished my homework, I'll put a bad mark in their books.

That's right you crazy little milk-drinkers - I'm a bad-ass.

And I feel kind of bad about it, after all, I just terrorised a bunch of 8 year olds.

- Daniel